Declaring Your Social Media Independence

The Evolution of Social Media

I read an article this morning titled “The Evolution Of WordPress.”  WordPress is the fabulous CMS software that powers this blog.  Hack wordpress a great blog that I read was commenting on the changes and improvements the WordPress software has seen.

In the same way the advances in Social media are dramatic.  Systems, methods, and technologies that many rely on were not around or were in infant stages just 5 years ago. 5 years in technology terms is a enormous amount of time but in the real world 5 years is a blink of an eye.  The web as we know it has changed dramatically in the last 5 years.  Its modern inception is only a mere 15 years or so old.

Web applications have given this ‘have it now crowd’ nearly instant gratification.  I have commented before that I am amazed at the feature development of some of the current Web apps.  Just bursting into prominence in the last 6 months or so FriendFeed and Toluu continually wow me with enhancements.

Social Media Addiction

Do you remember life before a cell phone?  Perhaps the cell phone era is difficult to remember we have come to rely on them so heavily. Now when I leave my cell phone at home despite $4 a gallon gas prices I turn the car around and go back for the phone.

I think many of us have the same thoughts about social media.  We have become so attached to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and any other social media application that application failure is devastating.

The twitter addicts have been hunting all over for a place to get their fix.  They have stirred the blogosphere into a buzz over start-ups like Plurk and identi.ca.

The twitter addicts seem to have become attached to Twitter in the same way they are attached to power, water, and other necessities of life.  They seem to be the most rabid.  But I venture to say that Gmail, FriendFeed, or Google Reader went down in the way twitter has I would be equally as frantic.  Social media addiction is prominent.

Declare Your Independence

I challenge you to declare your independence from Social media at least for some period of time.  Declaring your independence will assist you in breaking your cycle of addiction.  This should assist in the event that your favorite application goes down or becomes unreliable.  So take a break from social media.

Perhaps we should stop for a minute and smell the fresh air.  It is summertime. We should take a break and get outdoors.  We could take our families on vacation.  I recently saw a user friendfeeding on vacation from the beach.  This flickr image appeared in the friendfeed stream posted from the beach.  Could the addiction be anymore evident?  No friendfeeding or twittering during family time.   Take a break so you can appreciate and enjoy social media later.

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My FriendFeed Stats Top 10

After recently being LouisGrayed, my subscriber numbers have increased. For the new subscribers if you want to know what I am up to you can find me on FriendFeed. Mike Fruchter recently posted an image of his FriendFeed stats and I appeared as the one who found him most interesting.

Below is an Image of my FriendFeed Stats:

FriendFeedStats

Mike Fruchter posted overnight “10 people you should follow on Friendfeed.”  I appeared as #5 on his list.  I am happy to say he is one better at #4 on my list.

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I checked my stats (see above) and found that he was the top result in those that found me interesting.  I will try to post these stats around once a month to see how they change.

Find Me on FriendFeed – Franklin Pettit

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Subscriber’s Remorse

I sign up for almost every web application/service available. I try the alphas and the betas. I use OpenID or create logins. My GMail is crammed with automated emails. Many of the services add social networking features. I add some of the same friend’s on almost every service.

I have user accounts on hundreds of websites. I am not claiming to be in the top 1% of early adopters either. I would venture I am in the top 50%. Off the top of my head I have tried, Social Median, Profy, Toluu, FriendFeed, Diigo, TripSay, TradeVibes, Jott, Xoopit, Yokway, RememberTheMilk, Skribit, Woopra, Newscred, Socialthing, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, and MyBlogLog many many others all in the last 6 months.

OpenID is a good idea. We all could use one less username and password combination to remember. But once you are signed up for the service my questions begin.

My remorse centers around several questions.

  • When I sign up for a service who owns the data? Can I get data out that I put in? – The most annoying would have to be Facebook and their strangehold on user data. But generally I want the ability to export any data I put in.
  • How many annoying emails will I receive? Can I effectively opt out of them? – If a startup begins without some set small set of options for email notifications I contend it is doomed for failure.
  • Can I block users on the service? Can I import contacts from other services? – The Hide function on FriendFeed makes it one of the most useful applications around. Functionality that allows the end user to customize their experience even a little is a brilliant benefit.
  • How do I quit the service all together? – What if the service is just not for me. I do not ever want another email about it. I just want to quit and be assured my data is destroyed.
  • Is the application just a proof of concept? Is active development taking place? – Toluu is my greatest example of this. Toluu enhancements have been implemented and rolled out so quickly that there is no doubt that the application is in active development. Let me reiterate I understand the effort that scalability and keeping an application running takes. The development must continue and readily be seen by the end user.

Have you ever had subscriber’s remorse?

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FriendFeed Temperature Taking

Early Adopters

Louis Gray recently wrote his feelings about the stages of an early adopter. Early adopters may be fickle at times but many are currently on the same page it seems in love with the lifestreaming service FriendFeed. I admit FriendFeed is the place to be in my opinion.

FriendFeed is currently the hangout du jour for early adopters. But the broad early adopter appeal for FriendFeed goes far beyond mere lifestreaming. The service has become a place for community, a sounding board, a peer hangout, an industry watercooler, and certainly many more things.

As a result FriendFeed is being used as a place for research, analysis, and early adopter community feeling on many social media issues.

Early Adopters are the heavy social media users of the Web 2.0 products. Start up developers like Toluu founder Caleb Elston are able to use Twitter, FriendFeed, and a specific FriendFeed Toluu room as an avenue for user feedback, feelings, and product appeal.

With a community freely giving feedback an opportunity exists via the web that previously did not. Web 2.0 start-ups can gain valuable user opinions earlier in the development cycle with no cost to the start-up by utilizing a social network like FriendFeed.

Blog Post Material

From the obvious department let me just state: If you need a blog post idea hop on over to FriendFeed. The conversation is on every topic and you can begin the conversation yourself.

Many have taken conversations that occurred on FriendFeed and expounded upon the conversation to become detailed blog posts. This is good. Fractured conversation on FriendFeed is often conversation that would have never taken place otherwise and leads to more content.

Taking Temperatures

In the realm of gathering research many are using FriendFeed for direct research by temperature taking the early adopters. I am seeing this practice grow. Mike Fruchter in particular has used the discussion for later blog post material.

I have seen him ask direct questions on several occasions directly in what I would describe as a user polling temperature taking method.

This is a fabulous concept. If you have a group of people that have similar interests all in the same place it certainly is a good opportunity to ask them a question. Asking a question like this one:

“Research post – What are your dislikes about del.icio.us? What features is del.icio.us lacking?”

This was asked today by Mike Fruchter and generated beneficial discussion to Mike for post research but could potentially be great feedback for the del.icio.us team. It also was very beneficial to other users like me who might want to weigh and measure a product like del.icio.us against its competitors.

I commented the following in the middle of the conversation to Mike: “I like the way you have been using FriendFeed for research and early adopter temperatures. It is a good idea.” His response:

“@Franklin thanks. Friendfeed has truly become a powerful research tool, in some aspects more powerful then Google. It’s amazing watching this rapid transformation take place.”

I agree with him the power of FriendFeed as a research tool is astounding. The current merit, usefulness, and value of FriendFeed seems to be nearly boundless with potential appearing limitless as well. Early adopter temperature taking is just another benefit of the simple but complex addictive life-streaming service FriendFeed.

My Toluu Wishlist

What is the Goal of Toluu?

I began writing this with a different perspective about Toluu. Where is Toluu heading? I previously wrote a post titled “My Problems With Toluu.” This was several months ago as Toluu was in it’s infancy.

I considered titling this post “More Problems With Toluu” but thought better of it. I do not want to be critical but long for the value of this application to increase.

Toluu recently had a big day rolling out enhancements. At least 8 different blogs featured a post about the little RSS matching service from founder Caleb Elston. So I have been using the service again in earnest since that time.

Toluu is still making continual enhancements and the performance increases are sizable. If you have not logged in a while try it again. Speed has increased dramatically.

What does Toluu really have to offer an early adopter? What does Toluu have to offer an everyday user? Are the answers to these questions different? Finally, what is the Goal of Toluu?

I am not sure I know the exact answer but would love to hear from Caleb on the subject. Application development is an interesting process as I know first hand. An application does not always end up in the exact place you conceive it might at the onset.

In any case Toluu adds feeds to your feed reader and Toluu via bookmarklet. As long as you use the bookmarklet the feeds stay in Sync. Toluu also provides matching to other users in an attempt to recommend additional feeds. Toluu is designed with clean UI and is what this user expects from Web 2.0. It is in private Beta so I do not aim to condemn but am contemplating its usefulness, relevance, and future.

The following is a list of ideas produced from the Toluu friendfeed room and simple brainstorming. If the goal of Toluu is to provide simple solid functionality then Toluu is well on the way. But here is a list of features I would personally like to see.

Toluu Enhancement Thoughts

  • Tag/Organize/Categorize Feeds – This is my #1 the rest of the enhancements are in no particular order. Feed tagging increases Toluu ability to present recommendation, organization, search, categorization. Feed tagging would change the Toluu forever.
  • Feed Similarities – What feeds are similar to other feeds. Tagging or feed meta data could greatly assist with this. I want feed relationships. Tell me that if I read Lifehacker then Download Squad and Lifehack are similar.
  • Personalized Feed Recommendations – Beyond matching. Matching is certainly a good way to offer users insight into feeds they might like. I would like better feed recommendations in the way Amazon does. Tell me I would like feed “B” because 75% of users that read feed “A” also read feed “B”.
  • Matching Speed – The matching speed was recently greatly increased TWICE. The speed is NO longer an issue. The matching would now qualify as instant. One comment though: I wish it would not display current contacts as matches. If they are a current contact then I already know about them.
  • Syncing Between Your Feed Reader & Toluu & Feedly – See this link to the FriendFeed discussion about this one.
  • Better Integration With Other services
    • Integration with Feedly
    • Integration with Friendfeed – I find Feeds more and more with FriendFeed. I have to launch the article and use the bookmarklet. It would be great to have an addon or greasemonkey script thought integrated a Toluu feed link into FriendFeed.
  • I hate bookmarklets – Everything has a bookmarklet these days. They clutter my bookmarks bar and I am uncertain what each one does. Perhaps a Firefox Addon.
  • User Profiles – I would love to see additional information about a user.
  • Clearly Display the User’s blog(s) feed(s) – This goes right along with the previous but I am listing seperate to emphasize its importance. It is not easy to see the blog feed for each user.
  • Import my FriendFeed contacts – I would say 90/95 % of my FriendFeed contacts are on Toluu. But I am not sure they are all contacts on Toluu. I would like them to be.  Bummer.
  • Browse Feeds by Name
  • Browse Feeds by Tag Directory
  • Feed Search
  • Contact/Person Search
  • URI search – I put in a web address and the feed page is displayed
  • Most Popular Feeds (feed stats)
  • Hot New Feeds – popular
  • Enhance the Bookmarklet and future Firefox addon to support Tagging
  • Number of Toluu Subscribers per feed on feed view
  • Site Help – Sometimes I am uncertain what Toluu can currently do and what it can not
  • Edit My Toluu Feed List – A clean easy interface for editing my feed list
  • Clear My Feeds / RSS Reset – Is this already possible?

Toluu is a young private beta application. From my view the future is very bright.

Most of my enhancements center around Toluu being about feeds. I understand the data commitment and strain that storing meta data and information about individual feed data could consume. But I believe it would be very worth it to the end user.

Toluu is great and I say once again I believe its future is bright. I can not wait for its features to extend and its value to increase. I have Toluu invites if you would like to try it.

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Write When and What You Want To: The Rest Is Bologna

Write what you want and when you want to because the rest is just bologna. I read posts all the time with hints, tips, and these grand thoughts about blogging. They instruct you on how to grow your readership, encourage visitors, and some even give pointers for monetizing your blog.

You are either adept at writing interesting content or you are not. Some people are good at writing and some are not. I read blogs that are absolute CRAP everyday. I love FriendFeed and enjoy the noise to a certain extent but let’s get real. The river of noise is full of poorly written bad content. That is fact. Crap existing in the stream of the blogosphere. But it is ok, this is what can distinguish your blog from the noise.

Blogging is more about luck than anything. These hints from the blogosphere are just pointers to increase your chances to be successful. It really is all about luck. Don’t believe all the problogger & copyblogger stuff. Did you read the words let me type them again: It really is all about luck!

I read several blogs not in the tech field that are very well written but not very interesting to most. They have a consistent readership under 20.

Does it matter what they write about? Not really they write because they want to. They are not in the obsessed tech blogger mode of checking stats 10 times per day. They could care less about publishing breaking news or timely posts.

They write to record their thoughts. What they post is thoughtful and interesting to their small audience. But even with readers under 20 because the content is well written all 20 readers hang on that bloggers every posted word.

So how does that apply to tech blogging. Write what you want to when you want to. If you write content that is well thought out and well written you will grow a following. But it will take time and luck as well.

Another thing I read about is posting timely. This really does not matter.

I posted today right after a product enhancement roll out and announcement. I posted literally 1 minute after the launch time. But I am a small blog. My exposure is limited.

I feel like I posted a well thought out solidly written post but it did not really matter. The posts later in the day by more well known bloggers got the majority of the page views. Post when you want. Even if it is old news if your insight or take is different and interesting a well written post can do well.

I was first today but it didn’t matter. Perhaps I should have posted tomorrow. Do page views matter? What is your goal as a blogger? Ultimately to grow your blog. I was happy with the post and the traffic was ok.

However last week I wrote a quick post about a Firefox extension and the post ended up on Scoble’s Google Reader shared items feed. That was the single best traffic day ever for this blog.

This is just a perfect example of the luck involved in being a new blogger. A post that you spend the most time on may not be the highest in page views while a quick post may go viral. You just never know.

But what you can control is quality. If you have the God given ability to write well then write well. Produce quality content.

Now another thing I read about being a successful blogger is to post more posts. Post daily or even more often. Well look unless you are blogging full-time this is not very realistic. Post when you can what you can. I have a day job. Blogging can become a hobby but as a hobby daily posting is nearly impossible for me. Do what you can when you can.

To be successful you need a lot of luck. But what you can control is quality, interesting, well written content. But don’t worry about readership your audience will arrive just be patient.

Always write what you want and when you want to because the rest is just bologna.